Funeral Director Meg Nagel explains the process of cremation at Beatty-Peterseim Funeral Home in Washington. Photos by Sam McIntosh.

The Washington community was invited Tuesday to tour the county’s first ever crematorium that was installed last July.

The Washington Beatty-Peterseim Funeral Home location – with locations in Kalona and Wayland – and the Chamber of Commerce hosted an Alive After 5 open house from 4-7 p.m. where groups of people got to check out the cremator structure and enjoy refreshments. The funeral home began talks to install the approximate $200,000 structure around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when they previously had cremations done at a business in Marion. As the pandemic brought an uptick in arrangements for funeral homes, it grew difficult for Beatty-Peterseim to schedule cremation appointments, on top of the expenses of outsourcing this service. Funeral Director Mark Beatty told attendees Tuesday that they decided to make an investment into the county by installing their own system, despite the cost, “For the volume that we do it didn’t make sense to buy it. There is no way I’m going to pay it off in my lifetime, the investment we made in it is for the community. If I had an accountant look at it he would say, ‘You can’t afford this, you shouldn’t put it in.’ I know they would have told us that, but I wanted to do it because it’s needed and it’s a service to the community.”

Funeral directors Beatty and Meg Nagel and assistant Lenora Dunbar have all completed six hours of online training to operate the machinery. The staff can receive remote notifications from the electronically-controlled multiple chamber structure, which also comes with customer support. They’ve performed around 10 cremations since July, and have notified other neighboring funeral homes about this amenity if they wish to use it.